A Honeyed Poison
by Argentus 9
Summary: An analysis of Tom Riddle's evolution into his present character, beginning with his school days and the first opening of the Chamber of Secrets... essentially, it's a look into the rationale behind the acts.
1. I am Lord Voldemort

Series - A Honeyed Poison 

Chapter I - I Am Lord Voldemort

Lord Voldemort?" McGuinness repeated distastefully. "Is that the best you can come up with, eh?" He smirked, revealing uneven teeth. "And when did you become any kind of nobility, your 'lordship'?" 

Padraic McGuinness was walking the line... he didn't know how close he was to being added to the list. Later events would put taking care of him at top priority, however. 

"Yes. I've resolved for years to dispose of 'Tom'. Don't you understand? Who would possibly be intimidated by the 'Dark Lord Tom Riddle'?" Tom answered impatiently. 

McGuinness shrugged. "Who'd you want to scare?" 

Oh, what an ignoramus. Why did he surround himself with people of such calibre? He'd be sure to find much more influential and intelligent friends once he was free of his bindings to Hogwarts and this frivolous young adult society. Tom masked his disgust as he watched McGuinness chew clumsily at the tip of his already quite mutilated quill. Perhaps he'd talk to Shipley and Couwenberg... they, at least, had some proper sense and pureblood pride and would appreciate his motives. 

Tom snatched up the piece of parchment covered black with tried and failed rearrangements of "Tom Marvolo Riddle" and stalked off through the low, dim, and green-tinged common room. "What?!" McGuinness called after him. 

Tom tossed his tired House robes at a chair. As he hadn't been looking, it hit, rather, a stack of books on his ebony wood desk, which toppled and knocked an open bottle of "Black Magic" ink into the ancient, copper-finished mirror. 

"Damn --" he cursed, grabbing his wand to clean up the mess. The streaks of black that had splattered the mirror proved difficult to remove. For a moment Tom stared at himself in the darkened reflection. He forgot, temporarily, of the increasing puddle staining his belongings. Lord Voldemort. Right now he looked very much the part of a powerful sorcerer. His green eyes were hooded and his angular jaw was set. His usually tidy, prefect hair hung over his forehead. Someday, he said quietly to himself, wizards all over Britain and beyond would fear and revere him for his power. Tom smiled and the expression was more a predatorial baring of teeth 

Even as he came back to reality and magicked the ink spill away, Tom was preoccupied. Even since his discovery of his unique genealogy, he had toyed with the idea of carrying out his obviously destined work. At first his goal had simply been to find the Chamber of Secrets and his serpentine servant. Just to have confirmation that he was, indeed, set apart from the ignorant Muggles who had reared him and even the common wizards of the magical world, would have been enough. He'd been researching and combing the castle for years, trying to find the fabled Chamber. But he was fourteen now, and it was firmly set in his mind that once he found the Basilisk, he would use it as the great Salazar Slytherin would have liked... and, naturally, he wouldn't cease his "cleansing" just because he had left school. Who could tell the impressive things that he'd accomplish in Ambition's name? What was ambition without action, after all? 

He realized, with a faint spark of worry in the back of his mind, that time was running out... he had a little over three years to carry out his first great world of Slytherin justice. Was that what it was? Justice? He had some to accept, in true Salazar spirit, that Mudbloods and Muggles were very near to worthless and had no right to freely mingle with the gifted. His lips curved in a suppressed smile... this same Fascist sentiment was carrying on, ironically enough, in that same Muggle world that he held in such contempt as well. If ever he admired a Muggle for anything, it was Hitler for his impressive dictatorship. Was their work justice? "But justice isn't what I'm concerned with," he told himself. "Hitler follows through with his beliefs and that's what I'm going to do.. I'll have a Third Reich of sorts in my own right." 

He returned himself to his present situation. Growing Muggle regimes were, of course, no use to him. However... there were increasingly disturbing reports of a rising Dark Wizard in the "Daily Prophet" every edition. Grindewald was all the magical media could talk of in early 1940... his exploits weren't as impressive as what Tom read in the British press of Adolf Hitler when he was taking his holiday in that hellish Muggle orphanage, and his goals weren't precisely what Tom was aiming for, but perhaps Tom's path to fame could lead through Grindewald...

He wasn't as shrewd or graceful in his crimes as Tom would have liked, however. His tactics were not far from those of a Saxon barbarian, and he was rumoured to be nearly inhuman, a kind of frothing, raving monster, striking apparently at random but revelling in the ensuing bloodbath and carnage. He was really just an characterless epic beast, Tom though meditatively, an overrated, temporary threat that would be removed by a counterpart epic hero with much pomp and circumstance in a few years of so. His valued traits did not lie in Grindewald. Where was the style in such lack of reason? 

No, Tom decided, his path to grander things would be aided by no one. He would be self-made. Alliances were a tricky business, as history proved, and Tom wouldn't stand for his dreams to be influenced by anyone else. 

But the time factor... he wouldn't live forever. Well, he reasoned rather optimistically, immortality could always be the final step if everything else went according to plan. Where was the Chamber of Secrets? All these fantasies were useless if he couldn't make his start with purging the school of Mudbloods. 

It was late and Tom's eyes were growing weary. He sat on the edge of his emerald-draped four poster bed... something that, in his first year, had seemed an immeasurable luxury compared to orphanage cots. There was time to test out his new name on Shipley and Couwenberg tomorrow, he thought, absently removing his brown leather shoes and tossing on a school issued nightshirt. 

What kind of an attitude was that? he asked himself somewhat viciously. He'd been silently ranting over his limited time element, and yet was ready to waste valuable time on sleep at the first test? Tom resolved that he'd read The Unabridged Accounts of Salazar Slytherin through the first three chapters and then go to bed. It was Saturday the next morning and he'd have a little leeway to catch up. 

As it turned out, Tom Riddle didn't retire after the third or even the thirteenth chapter. He stayed awake through the brutal small hours of the night, long after his roommates had drifted off, finished it and even went on to begin the architecture section of Hogwarts, A History. There would be many such sleepless nights in the years to come. 


	2. Grey Days and Red Nights

Series - A Honeyed Poison 

Chapter II - Grey Days and Red Nights

Tom Riddle was sixteen now, and the concept of "I am Lord Voldemort" was fairly well accepted within his inner circle. In the past two years, his inward life had taken on a much different feel to it: a culmination of his ambitions impending. 

It was 1942... the Muggle world was firmly caught up in the War, something that he was administered large doses of over the summer in London. The reverberation of German Luftwaffe engines, dull, far off explosions and sirens were a common sound plaguing the night hours. So far, the scanty wartime provisions and air raid drills at Central Kiplington Orphanage had been little more than an annoyance to Tom, but his admiration for Kaiser Hitler did not extend to allowing his own life to be so casually exterminated by a stray bomb. He had to guard himself to never let this idolatry slip or his patriotic British fellows would have skinned him alive, no questions asked. Patriotism was entirely wasted on the young Tom. 

But the long weeks in shell shocked London had not been wasted by any stretch of the imagination. He had gritted his teeth and stuck through the pain of living entrenched in the worst of Muggle society. Tom had cleverly excused himself from nearly all functions at the orphanage and a significant number of community meals as well. He had spent the time alone in a much forgotten corner of the dark, creaking attic, studying and contemplating. Occasionally he excused himself from duty and entertained himself with some of the less dark of wizard literary works and listened to some dusty Muggle records on an old player, most of them classical. It was mildly amusing to himself that he bothered trying to become well-rounded. 

However, the vast majority of the time was occupied with his nose buried in "borrowed" Hogwarts Restricted Section library books (which were technically not supposed to be lent out over the summer). Tom also exhausted many hours gazing out the rippled window at the grey, damp street in a silent state that would have appeared nearly insensible to the observer if they were not aware of the gears in his mind turning frantically in feverish thought. The wardens took no notice of his frequent absences and, if anything, were grateful for the lack of supervision and care that he required, otherwise occupied with the younger, more dependent children as they were. 

As much as Tom detested life at the orphanage, it did supply him with such time for contemplation as he would never have at Hogwarts. He never let himself slip on his academics and was one of the most impressive model students that was enrolled in the school of witchcraft, in the eyes of the faculty anyway. He had been promoted to prefect at the beginning of his Fifth Year, a responsibility that he did not exactly revel in but found to be to his better advantage in many cases when trying to win over the trust of teachers. In most instances, this was a brilliant success and even the professors who were not exactly partial to Slytherin had nothing but praise for the young man. But Tom could never afford to let his guard down in Transfiguration class or anywhere where that damned Dumbledore may be lurking. It was perfectly obvious that the old man didn't have any faith in Tom whatsoever... Tom never let on, but it greatly unnerved him: the pale, knowing gaze of Albus Dumbledore. 

The two months away from the magical world seemed more dreamlike to him than any time he had spent in the infinitely more bizarre paranormal wizarding world. He felt as though he walked in a trance the entire time. He ate and slept little and grew paler and thinner, his face becoming more angular by the day, it seemed. This past summer he had spent perhaps twelve hours a day in the poor house's attic and his chief concern had been the mastering of the Unforgivable Curses. They were not much elaborated on in his Defence Against the Dark Arts class and so he was forced to rely on his own inborn sense of the art and the reference of books. For a few weeks he had practiced on the scrawny mice that skittered about the dreary corridors of the orphanage until he had mastered them fairly well. Mice, he reminded himself, were, nonetheless, not human beings and carried not the strength nor natural resistance of a human mind. When he ventured outside at dusk or at dawn, depending on how the mood took him, he would attempt the curses on alley cats and old mangy dogs. 

Tom finally reached his first great breakthrough in the form of Ivy Douglas. She was a slight, white wisp of a thing, a girl of no more than eight or nine with lacklustre flaxen blonde hair, thin pink lips, and weak bones. And she had the consumption. Ivy coughed pink-tinged mucus at night, wandered about with haunted eyes downcast, wrapped in numerous white shawls, and ate only when the nurses begged and bribed her to. Her parents had died a couple of years earlier in the Blitz and she had no known relations. Ivy rarely spoke, but she had an unfortunate habit of trailing after Tom. 

The nearly imperceptible patter of her delicate, often bare, feet had interrupted Tom in his meditation more than once. She would stand there, a few feet away and partially concealed by old, mouldy crates, looking at him with watery, unreadable eyes. Sometimes he would let her stay there and ignore her, other times he would shoo her back down the steps and away. 

There was a specific instance late in August when Ivy had ventured to within a foot of him and extended her hand and touched his arm. Tom had stared back, deep green eyes meeting faint blue. He backed up a little, conscious of her disease. _What do you want?_ he had asked. She did not answer, but simply sat down on the unfinished, worm-eaten floorboards, legs crossed and white nightgown and shawls spilling on the floor all about her like a shroud. Tom Riddle had then conceived a new, exciting, and slightly frightening idea. Tom turned it over in his mind for a moment and allowed the novelty to overthrow the fear. He dug among the pile of parchment leaves and books beside him and produced his yew wand. _Now just stay silent_... he had murmured as the little girl watched curiously. Tom took her hand in his to make sure she did not run off. He couldn't help but note its chill boniness. He levelled the wand a few inches from her pallid face. _Imperio_. 

Ivy's eyes had widened for she must have felt the effects of what Tom himself perceived as a wild mental rush of power. Their wills fought for only a brief few seconds and then Ivy seemed to go limp, both physically and spiritually. Tom could probe everything within her consciousness and memory and knew that, had he wanted to, he could have rearranged it according to his wish. He felt horribly elated in this fresh experience. 

_Blink_. She blinked. _Stand up and turn in a circle_. She rose on spindly legs, strangely puppet like, and turned, head lolling and arms sagging lifelessly at her sides. Tom felt a suppressed laugh bubbling up inside him. He'd have to order something that she would normally never think to attempt or else it wouldn't be a real test. _Jump up and catch hold of that pipe_. There was a thin, rusting pipe that was suspended somewhere about six feet from the floor... a girl of her stature and weakness could never have done it. But Ivy let her head roll back on her neck, looking at the high pipe with dead eyes. She bent her knees, slowly, and leapt desperately, arms outstretched as if she saw something wonderful and unattainable just out of her mortal grasp. Tom was dumbfounded to see her fingers brush the pipe and grasp it with an almost mad fervour. She swung limply from the pipe, her feet dangling nearly her own height from the ground. Suddenly Tom recalled the steam that often rose from that pipe... it was a hot water duct. He scrambled to his feet in a rush and lifted her down, examining her raw, pink hands. She had never cringed though the metal must have been close to scalding. 

Tom had taken her to the steps of the attic and thus ordered her, not yet releasing her from the spell: _Go down and show a nurse your hands. Tell her that you accidentally touched a radiator. Go about whatever you'd normally do today until I tell you otherwise. Don't tell anyone what happened here. _

For the last week of the summer holidays that Tom had remaining he experimented with Ivy Douglas, contemplating testing her with a few seconds of the Cruatius Curse but thought of all the noise if would make and changed his mind. For that week he had kept her under the enchantment constantly, only releasing her when it was time for him to return to Hogwarts. And after he had done so he talked to her for some time, warning her to never reveal anything about him or he'd subject her to things much worse than that. She had not spoken through the entire thing, only nodding and staring with her startled rabbit eyes. 

Ivy Douglas _did_ venture to inform her caretakers of her experience, but it was only after Tom had left for school. It was in the midst of one of her more ghastly coughing fits and it was sadly deemed that the tuberculosis had taken her mind and made it unsound. She died three days later, but Tom was not to know her fate for he never returned to Central Kiplington Orphanage. 

Meanwhile, Tom Riddle had been granted with yet another spark of genius and before he went to Kings Cross Station he had paid a dire visit to Vauxhall Road and there purchased a diary, entering into a new era of his life. He returned to Hogwarts a different person that year, leaving the grey, rainy days and barraged, red nights of London behind. 

*** I didn't really intend for that story to turn out quite so depraved, but I just wanted to show the level that Tom has risen to (or sunken to, however you want to look at it). He's got a very, very sick mind even at this age (although you can still see a few glimpses of conscience here and there...) . Poor Ivy. : ( 


	3. Anguis Diluculum, Dawn of the Snake

Series - A Honeyed Poison

Chapter III - Anguis Diluculum, Dawn of the Snake

Spiritual possession of inanimate objects was a highly confusing and dangerous process, Tom Riddle was discovering. The last three hours aboard the Hogwarts Express had been spent poring over texts relating to the subject, and Tom was disappointed in the realisation that the path to immortality, within his original body or otherwise, would not come immediately and without prodigious effort. The first step, according to the plan that he had laid out in his head after a starling epiphany that he'd been blessed with at the end of the summer, was to incarnate his mental self within an article that would last better than his natural flesh. Just before his departure to King's Cross Station, he'd bought a blank journal at the stationer's on Vauxhall Road. He now surveyed the diary that sat demurely and innocently beside him on the seat. 

No matter... he would eventually accomplish it with the signature hard work that he devoted to everything of importance to him. He had already mastered the first of the infamous Unforgivable Curses, had he not? Tom remembered briefly the dreamlike sight of the little girl bent under his will. 

He had caught a fleeting glimpse of the Daily Prophet headlines earlier that day... "New Underage Wizard Codes to be Enforced". It seemed that students, over the holidays, would no longer be allowed to practise magic without desperate need, under penalty of prosecution and possibly expulsion. It was a policy that half of Platform 9 3/4 had been discussing with outrage when he'd arrived... "a breach of privacy", "will they be suspending the Writ of Unconditional Wand Possession next, too?", "absolutely out of the question in times like this!", and like comments. It was only fortunate for Tom that the law was not to be strictly enforced until mid-summer of the following year. He'd succeeded in his necessary experimentation thus far and would have at least a couple weeks of next summer as well. 

Stewart Shipley seemed to materialise without warning, as was his rather annoying custom. The boy was wiry and rodent faced with rough, reddish hair... his pale, almost non-existent eyebrows gave him a queer, sad-eyed look that didn't exactly fit his character. Tom closed the book he'd been paging through discreetly and looked up. 

"And how are you, Voldemort, my friend?" Shipley asked, tightening his school tie in preparation for their arrival. 

"Same as always, I suppose," Tom replied detachedly. 

Shipley studied him critically for a moment and twitched his fingers, another odd habit... one that gave him away as nervously formulating something within. He was quick-witted but an extremely unconvincing liar. "No. There's something different around you. What is it?" 

Tom was ashamed that he hadn't been able to disguise his new found power and confidence better than that if Shipley could spot it within seconds. "It's nothing. I just had a trying summer what with living in London --" 

"And it's not shell shock either. Go on." 

Tom was irritated and shot a glare towards his classmate. "I've been developing Lord Voldemort rather... er... rigorously lately, Stewart. It's... accelerating," he said quietly, looking not so much at Stewart as though him. No one that surrounded him seemed "real" anymore... they were all just mortal creatures, even those who relatively understood him like Shipley, were nothing more than translucent things that would pass out of his life in the bat of an eye. He was in a different dimension than them all... a higher plane of dominance altogether. 

"It?" Shipley was now picking vigorously at his fingernails and blinking rapidly. "I know that you're trying to make something of yourself, but I didn't think you'd be getting around to it so soon, Tom."

"Voldemort," Tom corrected impulsively under his breath. Shipley looked piercingly at him, but he took no notice. "I... I can't wait forever, you know," he stated uncertainly. 

"True... I guess no one lives forever," Shipley agreed, seeming to shrink now from the subject. Awkward silence ensued. 

Tom Riddle had barely heard the comment, but it's meaning suddenly struck him a few seconds later. "No one lives forever". Hadn't the alchemist Flamel been continuing happily for some six hundred years? Why was it not possible for himself? Shipley's words stung him and the "screaming" panic attacks that had begun to occur more and more frequently within his head erupted now. It was like a chorus of banshees urging him frantically on, but he was unable to think over their incessant screeching.   
"Headache?" Shipley asked. 

Tom did little more than shake his head, and Shipley shortly departed from the compartment without another word. It was a struggle to calm the panic, the irrational, overtaking fear of failure, but Tom forced himself to regain mental control through sheer willpower. He _would_ live forever. He would not die a nameless and obscure wizard. He would not only take a prominent place in the history books, he would be their sole subject for centuries to come.. he would _write_ history. 

And so, upon his return, Tom Riddle took up his continued search for the fabled Chamber of Secrets. Terrorization of Hogwarts and the basic furtherance of Slytherin's work was the launching pad and, without it, Tom was in for a life of pining monotony, unable to achieve any of his greater goals. There were certain things on the metaphorical agenda and, as he hadn't yet been able to work out a practicable plan with the diary transference, he turned, once again, toward his initial ambition. World domination was so far ahead of him that Tom didn't even allow himself to fantasize about it when there were more important and pragmatic efforts to tackle... more simple stepping stones. He would have to start small, as all the Greats did. 

He knew that simple research was probably not the best approach to finding the Chamber, but it was the nature of the honour student to turn to the library in time of need. The state of becoming a prefect had trained him to engage himself in such trite methods of approach and it was a difficult habit to shake. Of course, Tom had read and reread every possibly related volume and even considered that there may be a complex system of cryptology in the ancient writings of Slytherin, but could come to no conclusion with it. Nevertheless, he retired to the library on a warm, comfortably sleepy afternoon a few weeks into the term... always willing to give the trite another try. 

Tom set aside his Advanced Arithmancy homework and surveyed the vaulted and arched room about him, plastered floor to ceiling in leather, binding paste, parchment, and ink. It had a strange appeal... but full of useless books, Tom thought bitterly. Any theories that he'd thought remotely feasible had all been refuted lately and he was becoming frustrated and downtrodden. His gaze shifted to the far end of the ornately gated Restricted Section. He'd been there many time, of course... on legitimate as well as dishonest business. There was one book, however, that he now suddenly dragged out of the dusty closets of his brain and remembered... a book kept under lock and key on a nearly forgotten, long un-tidied shelf. It was nameless and apparently authorless as well, but the ancient, half-rotten hide it was bound in was a curious deep green and the manuscript was covered in cryptic carvings and deteriorating embroidery, much of it including classic serpentine imagery. If his answers lay in any book at Hogwarts, it was that mysterious and formidable tome. 

Tom closed and stacked what he'd been working on in a flushed excitement, even though he realised that keeping a low profile was imperative. He couldn't believe that he'd let the book slip his mind for so long now... but things _with_ names are prone to slips of the mind, much less things _without_ them. It was not really so surprising. He remembered when he'd come across it originally, he'd cast every unlocking charm he knew at the time, all of them to no avail although many of them well outside the proper school rules. As he made his mock casual way toward the Restricted Section, Tom _knew_ that there was something important in that book. Salazar Slytherin had surely granted his rightful heir with this sudden revelation... to what else could it be attributed? But would he come through? Could he open the book or would he fail his great Ancestor? And even so... would he be capable of comprehending it and using the resulting information to some successful end? Questions flooded Tom's mind and as he fumbled with the latch on the gates, he felt a great exultation, the perfect antithesis of, although equally powerful as, the panic attacks that often plagued him. 

He became conscious of the fact that even prefects needed to show the librarian a pass. He was aware of the library proctor, Mr. Crockford, giving him a piercing and inquiring stare. It was by sheer luck that Tom had a pass issued by Professor Albion, the Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher, that wasn't void until the end of the term and it included unlimited visits to the Restricted Section. He scrabbled in his pocket and found the slip, flashing it to the old man and receiving an unruffled nod of acknowledgement in return. 

Even in his hurry, Tom paused for a moment of sick, private amusement. It was terribly ironic that Professor Albion, the very woman who so earnestly tried to deter her students from the Dark path , had granted him with the essential means by which he would ultimately attain that very path. She, the well meaning "white witch", had aided the greatest wizard of all time in coming to terms with his first significant unearthing. He would have laughed if it wouldn't have been so noticeable in the silence. 

Tom trotted a wending course through the aisles of the Restricted Section until he came to a familiar area in the last row. The mouldy green volume was still in its place, as he'd expected. He tried to keep the book's chains from rattling too sharply, but his hands were somewhat unsteady in his excitement. Late afternoon light shone in amber waves through the lattice-work crystal window, illuminating floating dust motes in the thick, stuffy air and sending a particular ray upon the face of the book. It was an inhuman, inanimate face, of course, but Tom immediately loved it... it's features did not contain a recognisable visage, but rather a mesh of snakes and runes, elements that were more beloved to him, at that moment, than the eyes or lips of any woman or veela on Earth. The light that shone upon it seemed otherworldly and intended... as though even the Sun himself ushered in this new Golden Era that was about to come into being. 

And how to open the treasure chest of secrets within? If the book was meant for the Heir of Slytherin there was only one foolproof way. Tom looked about him like a startled rabbit about to make a courageous dash into some known danger... he brushed his fingered reverently over the surface of the text and savoured the feel of it... he licked his lips, focused on the snakes that now seemed to writhe animatedly before him, and spoke a single word of Parseltongue. 


End file.
